1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cameras capable of automatic winding and rewinding of film by a motor drive, and more particularly to a motor driven camera with means for automatically switching the camera to the rewinding mode upon detection of the end of a length of film in the camera.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many of the conventional motor driven cameras perform the film winding operation by use of a motor. When the length of film in the camera is at an end, as detected by the photographer, a manual actuation of the rewind control button (R button) is required, so that the film transport mechanism is changed over from the winding mode to the rewinding mode. The rewind crank is then operated to perform a rewinding operation, or the motor is coupled to the rewinding mechanism to perform the film rewinding operation. The manual control of the transition from the winding to the rewinding mode, which has always been required when the exposed film was to be exchanged with fresh film, had no direct bearing on the taking of pictures, constituted a complicated process for film exchange, and was very inconvenient when a hurried preparation for shooting had to be made.
It is also known to provide an automatic transition control method, in which the maximum possible number of frames in the loaded film is preset on the camera. When that number is reached, selection of the rewinding mode is automatically effected. The use of this method, however, gives rise to the problems that the photographer often sets an erroneous number of film frames, or overlooks the setting of the frame number, and the roll film then does not provide more than the preset number of frames even though a number of more frames are available.